Cherry Harvest

Cherry Harvest. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

We have a cherry orchard about a mile down the road from out house and the Bing cherries that I picked up the other day are really nice. Rains moving through the region have cherry producers scrambling right now to get the cherries off the trees according to NW Cherries, BJ Thurlby.

THURLBY: Now if we can just keep Mother Nature at Bay for the next 2 months. (Laughs) We’d rather have her helping us than hurting us and anytime we see clouds like we’re seeing right now over Central Washington it makes everybody very nervous. I know like you said our growers with helicopters ready to go and growers have all kinds of tricks up their sleeve to keep the cherries firm and on the tree despite a little bit of rain. We’re all sitting here with our fingers crossed and again a little rain is normal in the summer but the key is we don’t want to see a two to three day rainstorm. That just really puts the crop in peril.

Cherries have this way of soaking up the rain and then splitting which makes them unmarketable and many times after a rainstorm you will see and hear helicopters hovering over an orchard to blow off that excess moisture. So far this season the crop is a bit shorter but the quality is excellent. And now new research shows that eating about 45 (280 g) sweet Bing cherries significantly decreases circulating concentrations of specific inflammatory biomarkers in the blood. So enjoy.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.